Make Your Daughter Berserk Day

Season 21, Episode 58

First aired 23 March 2017

We open Chez Seoighe, where Réailtín is in a moderate strop, glaring at Micheál and refusing to eat the pot of slop he’s prepared for her breakfast. She snots that she’s got soccer practice and stomps out the door as he yells after her, “Do bhricfeasta! A Réailtín, do bhricfeasta!” It seems it’s going to be one of those days, and that the bricfeasta will go uneaten.

And speaking of ill-tempered teen-type daughters, Katy is wishing John Joe a happy birthday over at Gaudi. She tells him she has good news: she’s rearranged her schedule and is now preparing a birthday lunch for him! This gives him diarrhea face, not just because he is familiar with the food at Gaudi, but also because Dee has scheduled a “no Katy allowed” birthday lunch for him already. I’m sure no hijinks will result from this.

At the salon, Caitríona is ranting, as usual. This time the unfortunate audience is Gráinne and Vince, and the topic is Annette, whom it seems may be suing them over last episode’s seaweed-induced pavement vs face incident. The panic spreads to Gráinne, who just now realizes that insurance is a thing, and that she doesn’t have any. Vince tries to reason with them, because he has never met them before, but it’s an uphill battle, as Gráinne is now in a zombie fugue and Caitríona is yelling about the various injuries she’s sure Annette is going to fake, such as a dislocated kidney and a bruised DNA. 

Beach, Please!

Season 21, Episode 57

First aired 21 March 2017

We open with Réailtín pulling a sickie so obvious it can be seen from space, though of course Micheál falls for it after looking in and confirming that her throat is indeed red. Apparently he has never seen a throat before and does not realize that’s what color they always are. Every time he turns his back, or indeed blinks, she’s got her phone out of her bathrobe pocket and is furiously messaging someone, as I am told the kids today do, with their Instagrams and their emojis and their illiteracy. Just as she texts that she’ll see whomever at 1:00, Micheál announces that he’s got the day off today from the planetarium or wherever he works, so he can stay home and take care of her in hopes of returning her throat to its normal color, whatever that may be. She doesn’t like this idea, because it’s going to be very difficult for her to get Internet kidnapped with her dad hanging around all day.

Colm stops in the pub to show Mo the pair of tickets he’s gotten to some comedy club in Galway, which as you may know has been named Asian Capital of Comedy 2020. She tells him she’s been to said club and it’s super iontach, which he thinks is a good thing since he’s taking Janice, who is dead sexy and a right ride and so on. Just then he gets a text and looks stricken, by which I mean his eyes narrow slightly, and he dashes off, leaving Mo alone to wish she didn’t live in a town in which the two most eligible bachelors are Colm and Cuán.

Gráinne, who is now giving massages out of her home apparently, sees off another satisfied customer, who we will assume was also unconscious on a stretcher when she came in. Pádraig has been hiding in the bedroom waiting for her to finish, and he is cranky, because this is not the first time he’s played hide-and-seek and no one came to seek him. There is discussion of two identical unlabeled envelopes of cash on the kitchen counter, one of which contains a large amount of money to pay the bills, and the other of which contains a small amount of money to buy a seaweed stand, and which we are sure are not going to get mixed up with wacky results within the next ten seconds. There’s a confusing charade in which Gráinne desperately tries to hide from David the fact that she is working and paying bills. I don’t know, either. Oh, and we get to see Gráinne give Pádraig a massage, which consists of her punching him in the spine and rotating his shoulder blades 180 degrees. Hopefully he still has his neck brace from that time he fell in the community center.

Can't Bi Me Love

Season 21, Episode 56

First aired 18 March 2017

We begin at Gaudi, where Fia and her tiny heart-shaped lips reject a phone call from Adam, while Pádraig and Mack look on sadly. Pádraig I get, since he and Fia are intermittent BFFs, but I’m surprised Mack even knows who Fia is. Also, there are still glasses of that nuclear-green sludge sitting around on the bar, because everyone is too afraid to touch it to clean it up. It’s also possible they are candles. The line between edible and inedible is tricky at Gaudi.

Outside the new pharmacy, Gráinne does a triple-axel to try to avoid an angry-looking Caitríona, but it’s all for naught, because Berni appears and yells, “Hi Gráinne!” Let me tell you now that this episode has a lot of Gráinne alternately attempting to tell Caitríona about the seaweed and attempting to keep her from finding out about it, and I am going to skip over as much of it as possible, for all our sakes. Caitríona is fuming that the pharmacy is selling all the same rubbish she sells in her salon, but Berni tries to assure her that she has built up customer loyalty through years of abuse and surliness, and there are a lot of locals with low self-esteem who depend on that. Gráinne offers to go check out the competition later today, and Caitríona thanks her for being such a good friend. It’s never going to end well when Caitríona starts talking about friendship.

Inside the pharmacy, Janice is nervous about today’s grand opening, but Mo assures her things will go fine, and that she’ll ask Mack to drive to Galway to pick up the canapés. Hopefully she’ll take the time to explain to him what canapés are, or else he’s going to show up with a cage full of birds or a group of Portuguese nuns. Colm shows up and smarms around grossly, flirting with Janice by telling her he needs medicine urgently and also a trolley to cart his giant willy around in and so on. Instead of throwing up, or spraying him with mace, Mo and Janice smile coyly and flirt back, and it is yucky. 

Fia, Wouldn't Want To Be Ya

Season 21, Episode 55

First aired 14 March 2017

We open this episode, in which everyone is driven to drink, with Adam’s mother Penelope St James-Attenborough telling him he should be grateful that she’s managed to get him back into university, which you will recall he was thrown out of for trying to make out with his tutor. Of course, “gratitude” is not a word Adam is familiar with in any language, so he says his version of “thank you,” which is “give me some money.” She snaps that she already had to give the school €1000 to take him back, so he’s smarmy and threatening, and she’s aggrieved and threatening. Hopefully he’s studying Family Counseling at college, because they need some.

Gráinne exchanges eff-you looks with Caitríona at the shop, but David tells her she needs to make nice or she’ll be joining him on the way to the dole office, especially since the pharmacy opens tomorrow and Caitríona’s going to be furious when she sees the seaweed on sale there. Gráinne is buying a giant bag of Doritos, which doesn’t seem like something Gráinne would eat, and I swear they are on the shelf next to the mouthwash. The geography of Vince’s shop is amazing.

Mack and Dee are being lovey-dovey and flirty-wirty at Gaudi, which always makes us feel disoriented and uncomfortable, like when Berni and Bobbi-Lee are getting along. Fortunately this will soon end, because Janice breezes in and kisses Mack hello in an inappropriately intimate way, i.e., a way that involves her putting her mouth on him. Surprisingly, Dee doesn’t slap Mack and storm out, or grab a fistful of Janice’s hair and pull her to the ground. It’s like we don’t even know these people anymore! Janice is all, “Oh, you know each other?”, and Mack is like, “Yes, we’re married, so please get your mouth off me temporarily.” Janice notes that she’s the new pharmacist, and provocatively tells Mack she’ll be seeing a lot of him, wink wink, and looks at him in a way that says she’s undressing him with her eyes, and likes the hairy beefiness she sees. Of course this makes him gulp nervously, because he is uncomfortable with the thought of his own sexuality, and also the thought of Dee murdering him.

Kick Out The Jams

Season 21, Episode 54

First aired 9 March 2017

In today’s episode of Berni’s Kitchen Nightmares, Sorcha is pasting fake “Subh Shorcha” labels on jam jars she’s bought from the shop. Out in the street, Berni stops Caitríona to tell her Sorcha’s debuting her jam today, and of course Caitríona responds as if she’s been offered dog poo on a stick. Berni then bursts into the café and starts ranting, which sends Sorcha into a panic, but it turns out she’s just mad over some nonsense with last night’s coffee delivery. Don’t worry, Berni, no one comes into your café expecting decent coffee. Or food. Or service. They mostly come to get out of the cold, really. Sorcha breathes a sigh of relief when Berni spots the fake jam and doesn’t notice anything suspicious about it, instead oohing and ahhing over how lovely it looks and how trustworthy Sorcha has become all of a sudden. This, students, is what we call “dramatic irony.”

Down the road, Caitríona stops by the building formerly known as An Teaghlach to harass Tadhg and the builders. Initially we are disappointed when he doesn’t tell her to buzz off, but we realize something even better is about to happen: he thanks her for warning him away from sketchy accountant Seán, and just as she starts to gloat, he tells her that thanks to her interference, he’s found an even better new tenant: a pharmacy! Which will also have a wellness center upstairs that is basically a salon! Based on Caitríona’s sudden diarrhea face, they will hopefully sell Imodium, too.

At the doomed salon, Gráinne wonders if she should ask Caitríona about selling her seaweed there again, but David doesn’t think it’s a good idea, mostly because he is tired of this storyline and doesn’t want to hear about it anymore. Caitríona bursts through the door in a fury, ranting about the pharmacy that’s opening next door. Seeing what a terrible mood she’s in, Gráinne decides this is a good time to ask about her seaweed, which Caitríona is as gracious about as you’d expect. She yells that she’s got €1000 of actual product on the shelves to sell and doesn’t have time to deal with Gráinne’s muck. Presumably that includes David. There is more discussion of the financial ins and outs of small rubbish salon than we care about, but the gist is that Caitríona offers Gráinne a microscopic commission on any new business she brings in. Well, this will sure encourage Gráinne to write a glowing review on that mentoring form she’s got to fill out to get Caitríona paid.

Adam & the Antics

Season 21, Episode 53

First aired 7 March 2017

We open this episode, which includes a lot of talk of jam and also a terrifying look into the dark depravity of Adam’s mind, with another of those establishing shots of the coast taken from TG4’s new helicopter. It’s helpful because it reminds us that the ocean is a thing. In town, David’s penny-pinching rampage is really getting on Gráinne’s nerves. She wants a cup of coffee, but he reminds her that they could save money if instead she just pressed her nose up against the window of the café and looked at the coffee. David’s austerity measures are going to have the Greeks rioting. She suggests they sign on to the dole, but he doesn’t want to, because it would be less embarrassing to eat apple cores out of a bin while living in a ditch, apparently.

Adam stops by the community center to be roguish and smarmy to Fia, who is vaguely tired of his nonsense, but not tired enough to stop chasing after him. It seems he’s been hanging around with Síle again, who we established last time is the official slapper of the Wild Atlantic Way. Of course Adam doesn’t see what the problem is, because he never sees what the problem is with anything he does, and volunteers that he bought somehow acquired a fashion book Fia wanted for the essay she’s writing. It turns out to be the wrong one, which she’s unnecessarily rude about, although I guess it makes up for all the times she should’ve been rude to him but instead gave him €50 and a hug. We can understand why she’s so stressed about this assignment, because it’s the first time we’ve ever seen her do any work in a year of being an alleged student. She asks if he wants to come over and watch the rest of some series together—I’m guessing Bob the Builder—but he smirkily tells her he already finished watching it with Síle. Lovely. He seems unnerved by a text he gets, by which I mean he is smirking at only 60% of capacity, and then dashes off, leaving her in a bad mood and a worse outfit.

Gráinne: Engine of Unemployment

Season 21, Episode 52

First aired 2 March 2017

It’s morning, and David is moping around the house zombie-style while Gráinne sweeps through the house like a tornado on uppers, excited that Caitríona has asked her to come in early so they can discuss her seaweed before the customers arrive. I’m unsure why Gráinne thinks Caitríona is suddenly going to be anything other than terrible, but I guess that’s the pointless, soul-crushing power of optimism. She doesn’t notice that he’s in a tranquilized stupor, which is probably because she’s used to him being sluggish in the morning as his body struggles to process the previous night’s nettle- and moss-based dinner.

Upstairs at the pub, which has been transformed into a small branch of Toys ‘R’ Us, Frances is frantically looking for Cuán’s cuddly dinosaur, which she claims he’s inconsolable without, though he seems perfectly happy to me. She should be more concerned with the fact that he seems to have been replaced by a different and significantly older child since the last time we saw him. Tadhg appears and gives approximately zero shits about Cuán, whomever he’s played by today, or the dinosaur, who doesn’t pay taxes and is therefore a drain on society. Frances is annoyed at how useless he’s being, and then John Joe shows up with the dinosaur, which gives Tadhg an opportunity to point out what a terrible deadbeat dad and generally awful person he is. Tadhg has a lot of room to talk about neglectful deadbeat dads, as Eoin would tell us if he weren’t busy nailing him into a coffin and setting the building on fire.

Gráinne, who seems totally coked out with excitement, bursts into the salon, where Caitríona is as usual busy not working. Gráinne is thrilled to find she’s printed up brochures promoting the new sports massage service, but her excitement turns to “Oh, hell no!” when she sees that Caitríona has completely left her and her seaweed out of the pamphlet and has really just stolen the idea. Gráinne calls her on it, and Caitríona is so unbelievably snotty and passive-aggressive in response that you would get up and punch your TV if it were still under warranty. Gráinne goes totally ape on her, as we’ve been wanting her to do for about three weeks, and after calling her a thief and a wagon and a nuclear bitch, she quits and storms out.

"Everything?! About The Euthanasia, Too?!"

Season 21, Episode 51

First aired 28 February 2017

We open with David and Gráinne strolling down the street arm in arm as she complains about what a terrible mentor Caitríona is, and we get the impression this has been going on for some time. The complaining, I mean, not necessarily the strolling down the street, because we’re not sure how long the set’s fake street is. She wishes she enjoyed her job like David does, but he tells her that his job isn’t always great. For example, it’s kind of a downer when he’s getting fired from it. He’s about to tell her he’s gotten the sack, but Tadhg interrupts him mid-sentence to harass him, and offers to sell him his recently purchased building so he can turn it back into a kids’ prison. Gráinne invites him to shut up in several ways, and they stomp off just as Caitríona arrives to spread her patented brand of sunshine. Vince has told her that Tadhg’s not going ahead with his wine shop idea, so she’s in full gloating mode, so Tadhg plants a seed of doubt in her mind about possibly-shady dealings between him and Vince, which gives her instant diarrhea face, or as she would call it, “world-famous journalist with diarrhea” face.

At Gaudi, Father Éamonn tells David he’s heard he got the sack over Tomás’ little near-death experience. David is still beating himself up over it, but the father tells him it’s not his fault because Tomás stole the poitín out of his car, plus nobody likes Tomás anyway and there are so many hooligans in town that one less won’t make any difference. That last part is implied. Éamonn is more upset about the fact that David had poitín and didn’t give him any, but David isn’t in the mood for his whimsical alcoholic nonsense right now, and instead asks him not to mention any of this to Gráinne, because she doesn’t know about it. Conveniently, Father Éamonn knows about a social worker job that’s available right now, and is friends with the chairperson, in the sense that the chairperson has confessed a bunch of murders to him and he’s hardly tweeted or instagrammed about them at all.

Taking advantage of the sunny day, we have another scene out in the street, as Tadhg accosts Vince and demands reassurance that his recorded confession about Andy isn’t going to surface. There’s back-and-forthing, and warning each other, and angry finger-pointing and posturing, and it’s the kind of scene where you keep waiting for them to either start punching each other or making out. Of course Caitríona wanders up and asks them what they’re talking about, and rather than telling her it’s none of her damn business as we want them to, they stammer and act guilty and suspicious, and she’s clearly not buying what they’re selling. She reminds them that she’s a journalist and will uncover the truth sooner or later. Remember that all the top journalists spend their days sweeping up hair in a salon. She wanders away, and Tadhg and Vince are panicky, because they know that she’s not going to let this go, which will cause problems for them if she finds out the truth. Now that they’ve perfected the art of killing someone annoying and disposing of the body, I nominate Caitríona to be their next victim, thereby solving all our problems.